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NASA's Kepler spacecraft has begun its search for other Earth-like worlds. The mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 6, will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars for telltale signs of planets. Kepler has the unique ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.

"Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."

Scientists and engineers have spent the last two months checking out and calibrating the Kepler spacecraft. Data have been collected to characterize the imaging performance as well as the noise level in the measurement electronics. The scientists have constructed the list of targets for the start of the planet search, and this information has been loaded onto the spacecraft.

"If Kepler got into a staring contest, it would win," said James Fanson, Kepler project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The spacecraft is ready to stare intently at the same stars for several years so that it can precisely measure the slightest changes in their brightness caused by planets." Kepler will hunt for planets by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars -- events that occur when orbiting planets cross in front of their stars and partially block the light.

The mission's first finds are expected to be large, gas planets situated close to their stars. Such discoveries could be announced as early as next year.

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

On April 10, 2009, Costarrican Dr. Rafael Lamas was taking some pictures and in one of them appeared something he didn’t even see when making the snapshots.

It was later, on his PC when he realized that there was something apparently strange.

An enhancement of the “object” revealed a particular shape and color, and it was initially classified by Costarrican Ufologists as a U.F.O., but they were intelligently cautious as not to speculate and to demand an analysis of the picture.

Finally, an analysis was made by Prof. Ana Luisa Cid who came to the conclusion that the U.F.O. was really a butterfly of the Adelpha Cytherea Marcia type, abundant in the Central American country.

Few days ago, while the whole world was lamenting the lost of the Airbus A330-200 flight 447 of Air France over the Atlantic Ocean, and the research teams were working hardly to find the “black boxes” of the aircraft and the bodies of passengers or crew members, a mysterious message came to my e-mail.

Without signature or name of the sender, the message said one of the most stupid things I could have heard in a long while: that the aircraft went down due to work of hackers!

This was so outrageous that I immediately deleted the message, and my second thought was if there is a place in the world where this message could come from it must be Argentina. And I say this with no offense to our Argentinian members, and the Argentinians in general. But they had to accept that this is a sad reality nowadays.

Well, I received a second message, this time identifying the source, a so-called “Elron group” which operates under the direction of a “guru” named Jorge Olguín, from…Argentina!

As usual, it proved to be a mixture of esoterism, cultism, extraterrestrials, and a lot of conspirative conjectures. Nothing to take seriously or to loose a minute of time in.

But regretfully, once again, we verify how the most absurd speculations are capable to win the minds of feeble people that do not discern with reason and logic what the reality is, and do not bother to go to the scientific and technical sources to deal with different issues.

There is a set of people that prefers and is well open to any kind of story and to spread the most ridiculous rumor as if it were the real and hidden truth.

Like the fabricated version that announces that on August 27, Mars will be seen as big as the Moon in the sky. Something that do not resist the minimal analysis.Nevertheless this spurious species have been sent throuth the internet since 2003, and is repeated almost every year! See: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/18jun_approachingmars.htm

S115-E-07201 (19 Sept. 2006) --- This picture of unidentified possible small debris was recorded with a digital still camera by astronaut Daniel Burbank onboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis around 11 a.m. (CDT) today. Engineers do not believe this to be the same object seen in video taken by shuttle TV cameras earlier in the day.(NASA text attached to the picture).

This is a case in which all the circumstances surrounding the evidence plus the high quality of the witnesses involved, make of it an ideal one.

And it is just not a story, because there is a picture and no one can think that it was faked.

On September 19, 2006, one crew member of the Space Shuttle Atlantis was able to take this picture of what properly could be classified as an Unidentified Flying Object, or maybe to put it more precisely, an Unidentified Orbital Object.

Although the distance and therefore the size of the object are impossible to determine, --according to NASA officials—nevertheless, no one can think that this could be a spacecraft of any kind. It seems to be a small object made of plastic or acrylic, transparent, that with a certain dedication maybe someone could possible identify as a small piece of the International Space Station, of some Russian space ship or even that it belongs to the very Shuttle Atlantis or to someone of the crew.

We have to have in mind that there were three Extra Vehicular Activities (EVA) during the STS-115 mission, and the main thing they performed was to install a truss for the solar panels on the ISS.

Anyway, for the lovers of fantasy, here it is: a “certified” U.F.O. by NASA.

But the information provided by NASA makes reference to an object videotaped earlier the same day.

Well, here is the video. Astronaut Brent Jett estimates the distance to the Shuttle in about a 100 feet, which makes of this objet something that does not exceeds some inches in diameter. The astronaut also says that although it looks metallic it does not seem to be rigid.

With the only exception that plans are already in the make and steps are being taken to return to the Moon, but not just to visit it, but to inhabit it, and with the only qualm that –accordingly with each one’s conviction— there are people that think the salvation of humanity will be an act of God, all what was said by this extraordinary man of science, is in force and valid until this moment.

Therefore it is a pleasure to share with you this fragment of the renowned TV series “Cosmos” based on the book of the same name, and entitled “A pale blue dot”.